Ay Caramba!!

That's a lot of Massachusetts!!!

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the nonstop Ishie ego site, where I blog about my general adventures while incoming SGU students try desperately to sift through to find some substance, and a big hello to all my Annex peeps out there.

Happy belated Independence Day to all my fellow colonists out there, and happy uhh... any other day to everyone else. And to our former owners, we love you, England, we really do. We just also really love blowing things up.

So, where was I? I'm going to separate this into a few entires, because in the last couple of days I have walked the Freedom Trail, fought 600,000 people for a 4th of July on the banks of Boston's Charles River right outside the Esplanade, been pulled in to get a close up view of a hemiarthroscopy, and burned around Cape Cod. And to think, I just wanted to bum around this summer. Of course, that's still pretty much bumming around. It's just bumming around while spending more money. Where's that loan when you need it? LONG BLOG POST ALERT (but lots of pictures!!)

I guess I'll go in order... Previously, I blogged about driving in Boston with the chief, oft repeated advice of "don't ever do it", since the drivers are insane, and they fail to mark ANYTHING.

Turns out Boston doesn't want you driving in Boston either, a feature I noticed when I went to pick up my dad at Logan airport and decided to take the *smart* way in: the MBTA, as noted before. As I pull into Alewife station, I notice that they expressly tell you NOT to drive. This would also explain how Paul Revere mananged to complete his ride, though they no longer allow horses on the subway.

Speaking of Paul Revere, as this statue demonstrates, he doesn't actually ride all that well, and in said graven image, he is not only COMPLETELY in his horse's mouth to a degree that I'm surprised it hasn't bucked him off, but he's kind of skewed backwards with his legs sticking out. Paul Revere's Fall. One if by buck. Two if by rear.


Paul: "Whoooooaaaaaaa... I really wish I'd sprung the 9 bucks for that Charlie Ticket!"

Fortunately, Washington is a better rider. This may explain why we won the Revolutionary War. Riding lessons.


George: "Dammit Paul, be secure in the saddle, and quiet your hands!"
John and Ringo: "She loves you; yeah yeah yeah."

Anyway, parked at the Alewife station, which is 5 bucks for 24 hours of parking, which, combined with the 9 dollars a person for an all day bus/rail pass, is probably the second best money I've ever spent (the first best was the 40 bucks I spent for a 9 hour trip around Margarita Island).


Nowwwww all night long Charlie rides through the station crying "What will become of me? How can I afford to see my sister in Chelsea or my cousin in Roxbury?"

So for this low 14$ price, you can ride around ALL day and never once have to get behind a steering wheel. They have the best public transport I've ever seen, even besting San Francisco, which I always thought was pretty high end, and EVERYTHING is labeled and explained. Apparently, when Boston was allocating an "informative signs" budget, it all went underground, leaving nary a road sign to assist the unwary drivers above. Is that how you spell "nary"? Moving on.

Picked up dad at the airport by transferring a couple of trains and then taking the shuttle over to Logan, which, of course, is all part of that 9 dollars. I'm liking Boston more and more by this point, thus I can now honestly say, which I could not previously, that I am fond of Boston rather than thinking it should be turned into smoldering nuclear rubble, and that's saying a lot after that day of trying to drive through it!

Dropped his luggage back at the car and set to do the Freedom Trail, which is apparently one of the most famous historic trails in the United States. We unfortunately managed to skip the first couple of stops (like where Sam Adams and Paul Revere are buried, whoops), but started in the King's Chapel, and their requisite cemetery so at least we've seen John Winslow and Mary Chilton's death marker, and that's something, right?



I see dead people. By the way, noting the similarity between the design on the closest grave marker and Skullhead Boneyhands from Animaniacs is unamerican. Be advised.

Highlights... hmmm... it was cool. The Freedom Trail is very well marked by either a series of double bricks in the sidewalk, or where that fails, a painted red line.



In places, it seems somewhat arbitrary, taking long ways to cross the street, and going suspiciously out of its way to hit gift shops, but this 2.5 mile trail takes you by Faneil Hall, Quincy Market, the Old North Church, Paul Revere Mall, Paul Revere's House, the first school, Bunker Hill, King's Chapel, the USS Constitution, Boston Harbor, and the site of the Boston Massacre, and nowhere nearly in that order. To compensate, here's some pictures:



Okay, that's actually in Townsend, Mass, which is a cute well-patriotically decorated little town en route to Alewife station. But hey, nice July 3rd stuff, right?


One if by land:



Two if by sea:


Apparently, the "super" duck tour refers to the "super" feeling of relief you get *if* you manage to make it back to shore without drowning in Boston harbor from capsizing your listing, four-wheeled, fully-unseaworthy little thingamajig that makes the watertight old style VW Bug look like Old Ironsides in comparison.







See, I was worried people would forget I was in New England, thus necessitating the token church, though technically this is a meeting hall, so there you go. You can tell we're actually in a big city though due to the counterintuitive giant buildings behind it. Boston is kind of cool that way, particularly to those of us from Northern California who are unfamiliar with anything built before 1906.



Yeah! No tax on tea!!! Except... uhh... there's a tax on tea now... but most of it is Lipton, which already tastes like it's been dumped into a harbor, making future Boston tea parties somewhat redundant. D'oh. Incidentally, we're still paying a 'stamp tax'. But... uh... our military doesn't have to wear those red coats that scream 'please hide in the woods and shoot me', so I'm going to still say we came out ahead.



Yeah, they have these guys everywhere, but I still love them. Despite living in driving distance of San Francisco for years, I'd still head over to Pier 39/Ghiradelli Square/Fisherman's Wharf to see the performers (and the sea lions), and these ones are dressed in colonial best! The performers, not the sea lions. Sea lions are hard to get into bonnets due to the large teeth.







Hmm... "Hanging with St. Francis" sounds like a Tori Amos song, doesn't it?



No, this is not just another generic church; it's the Old North Church, so show some respect!



Kids, don't drink and drive... but if you do, drink Dr. Mcgillicuddy's!







Some of the places along the Freedom Trail are open with a suggested donation, and in some places, that suggestion becomes mandatory, but still, doing the Freedom Trail yourself is quite affordable. There are a lot of actors in costumes doing presentations about the history, which is always a treat. Even more of a treat was in the Old North Church, accidentally (sort of) getting pulled into the "Behind the Scenes" tour, and getting to climb halfway up the steeple to see where they'd come into put out the "one if by land; two if by sea" lights, and where Paul Revere had started the first bellringers guild as a teenager, and all the bellringing information contained within. I bowed out before getting taken down to the crypt, not because I wasn't interested, but because I figured I'd pressed my luck for long enough and didn't want to get 'discovered' in my unauthorized tour groupage. Bad Ishie.


The bell ropes and the tour guide whom I suspect knew I wasn't supposed to be there since when she did her count she said "close enough", but chose not to rat me out to the Man. Thanks tour guide!

Inside the main part of the church, they were giving an explanation of the history of the Old North Church, and interestingly, instead of normal pews, the church had sort of... they probably have a technical name I'm forgetting, but boxes for entire families that could be bought and decorated back in the day so that you didn't have to be bothered to mingle with riff raff while in church. Nice, eh? But posh! The other churches I didn't notice being similarly equipped, so apparently, it was just the Anglicans that were rich?



The clock has been working (though I think it needs to be wound) since it was created back in Colonial times, and those cherubs up there were actually stolen off someone else's ship (Canada?) and donated to the church. Boston took the unprecedented step of offering to give them back but the victims said "Eh, keep em; you've had them long enough..."

Oh, no, I'm wrong about the pews/boxes... my pictures of Kings Chapel reveal similar boxes, just apparently my lack of an attention span, so instead of deleting that last bit, I'll leave it in for kicks.

And speaking of Kings Chapel, taa daa:



Quincy Market is a definite lunch spot and is essentially the nation's largest food court, with some awesome seafood and a host of other things, one of which, is a huge crowd of people, apparently at all times. Best to eat outside.







I couldn't board the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides, because it was closed, but it's still a really cool ship that they apparently take out every year to stretch her... uhhh... rudder? Sails! That's it, sails.



There's also a destroyer at the other side of the shipyard whose name and
significance I've forgotten but it does possess a number of flags, and flags are always cool, right?



Bunker Hill... which in no way resembles a giant phallus... I wanted to climb up, because it apparently affords an incredible view of Boston, but the ability to climb it closed for the evening 15 minutes before we got there, so we sat in the battlefield eating lemon sorbet because battlefields always make nice picnic spots and boring field trips.


(Is Boston compensating for something??)

As it got late in the day and our feet were getting sore, we found ourself at the US shipyard with no real intention of walking all the way back, and no train station near by, but we did managed to hop a bus (REALLY good public transport), got directions to a seafood restaurant (I'm eating so much seafood in New England, I think I'm growing gills) from one of the stationmasters, and headed to the No Name, which is way down in the loading docks where you'd never expect there to be a restaurant.

Getting there was weird because Boston has something called the Silver Line, which is essentially... a subway without a train. A city bus drives in pre-made winding tunnels, identical to the subways but better lit, but without that pesky track, you just have a driver whose entire life must be like driving on the freeway when they put up those concrete barriers that make you feel like you're on a slolum course. Ahhhh!!!!!!!!!!

The restaurant was cool though, and one of those kitchy little places that I adore. Good lobster.



Then it was back through the silver line, back to the trains, back to Alewife and home by 1:30 in the morning, only to wake up at 6:30 and do it all over again for the 4th!

She may ride forever...

neath the streets of Boston; she's the chick that never returned...

Kingston Trio fans? No?

I'm picking up my dad in Boston tomorrow, and having learned from my last experience, I'm taking the train, or the MBTA or whatever they're calling it now. Planning on doing the 4th in Boston, which should be interesting to say the least. I wanted to do either a Boston on the 4th or Times Square on New Year's, ya know, one time where you're in the middle of a giant party of clumped together people so thick that you say "no mas!" and join a convent. That's my goal. Also to make that remoteness of Grenada seem all that much nicer. I'm going back on August 7th, a date which looms over me a bit, but actually less so now that I finally gulped down my fear and bought the ticket. As far as prepping to go back, I'm now (AGAIN) about halfway through eukaryotic epigenetics. Doesn't *that* sound like fun? For the uninitiated, that's the way in which genes are controlled in things-that-are-not-bacteria in ways that you can inherit but aren't IN your genes. Make sense? No? Me neither, but some of it's pretty cool in ways I'm not going to get into, because it would require so much boring backstory as to not make it worth it. Whoops, too late.

Still, if I'm going to have to take a final, I suppose better biochem than histo, something I *never* thought I'd say. Not because histo was that hard, but simply because I could not bring myself to care about it, despite having the coolest instructor. But biochem, as I've said in the past, and GRUDGINGLY, has some cool stuff, and the genetics section has the really cool shiz. Nitrogen metabolism, less so. Ooh, the significance of lysine and leucine. GRIPPING.

So what am I doing now? Do you care? Too bad! Grilling chicken and discovering that if you watch tv in the daytime, M*A*S*H is on like... 27 hours a day. Almost as often as reruns of the Daily Show, which damn, I like, but when you can recite the entire episode by 8:30 PM, it's a bit excessive, when Comedy Central isn't boring me with movies I've never heard of and ENDLESS ads for Girls Gone Wild. Apparently, since this enterprise has become so played out that it even makes topless women uninteresting, now they jump topless out of planes. Think of the windburn!

Oh, speaking of offensive commercials, I found one more offensive than the stupid Jared commercials AND the watch commercials, and I can't even remember what company is promoting this brand of nonsense.

But according to this company (and creepy cartoon mascot, which brings to mind the truly FUNNY Sunny D commercial where the cartoon spokesman pops out and the family screams and runs in terror, as any sane person would do), your man will love you if you buy him a HDTV. In fact, if you buy him the HDTV, he'll love you so much, he may buy you a shiny object from the jewelry counter because women are raccoons.

Screw diamonds, where's *my* HDTV? I can't watch MASH reruns on a diamond tennis bracelet.

So the desktop computer had a stroke and I had to play with the registry, which I hate doing because I keep being convinced that I'm going to do something horrible and the computer is going to melt into a pile of plastic goo while a deep mechanical voice cackles at me. I suppose the plus to diamonds is they don't have a registry you have to screw with.

I fixed most things (including the internet), but the Skype is screwed, so now I need to hook equipment back to my laptop like I had on the island, which violates my laziness clause, so blah. Well, to the BBQ!

Holy Hell!

Some explanation, perhaps.

As noted, in between shadowing, studying, and bumming, I've been burning off on side trips to explore the surroundings. Since I'm currently in Southern New Hampshire, this made a trip to Boston somewhat inevitable, since it seemed like something to see.

Unfortunately, since I went to school in California, while we were learning about the Gold Rush, everyone else in the country went to a class that said "Don't ever drive in Boston. Try to avoid driving in Massachusetts altogether. The people there are nearly as insane as the non-layout of the city which seems to have been hacked together by a deranged chimpanzee. If Boston were laid out anywhere near the way it is now during the Revolutionary War, we'd be speaking proper English, drinking good tea, eating bad food, and Paul Revere would, to this day, still be riding around in circles near Commonwealth going "Where the hell is the frigging freeway??? The map shows 14 of them here! I'm NEVER going to get these lights in the windows, and then all the poets will have to write about is a stupid red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens."

I've driven in San Francisco. This city features psychotic MUNI drivers and stop signs at the crest of 45 degree angled hills, double parking, one way streets, and nearly no parking.

I've driven in Tiajuana, where you have to dodge not only the statues arbitrarily placed in the middle of roads, but children selling various things that run at your cars, and the stigma of the California plate on the front and back end of your car that makes you a rolling target.

I've driven in Los Angeles, and love my impatient, SWAT team manuevering gun-toting amigos, and south of Pasadena, I am so in love with their much hated freeway system that I think I would get down on one knee and MARRY it if they'd allow such unions outside of Massachusetts.

I've driven through D.C., Salt Lake City, Atlanta, across the country via different routes twice, through blowing snow, over Donner Summit during a blizzard (a condition which has, in the past, led to cannibalism; I'm just saying), and yet all of this is a Sunday drive back from grandma's in comparison to Boston. Holy shit.

As I mentioned in the Montreal post, a city also notorious for bad driving habits, but which I found perfectly hospitable for lost tourists (save for the horse-drawn carriages in oldtown), when in a large city, I go with the general tradition of driving around sightseeing until I see freeway signs.

Don't. Ever. Do. That. In. Boston. There aren't any freeway signs. The freeways that are supposed to be there, as in, marked on maps, show no ways of accessing them, and roads that are straight on maps dead end into buildings forcing a quick left or right.

You'd think with a maze of schitzophrenic design and a town heavily inundated with tourists, the local drivers, like San Francisco, would have a built in element of patience with people. Not so. So I'm going to make a few suggestions:

First off, I hate it when people drift off at green lights too, but I own a stick shift. If I'm on a hill and you are three inches from my bumper, it's going to take me a leetle more time to get going as I am now ensuring that I don't roll back slightly and hit your tailgating ass. You also do not need to honk at me simply because the light has turned green and my foot is actively pressing down the clutch to take off. The only way you could conceivably honk that fast is if your hand was already on the horn, so kindly bite me.

Since we're on the topic of horns, while horns are certainly a fun novelty item in that they make a funny noise, and in Grenada, are used to say "hi", "screw you", "I'm here", "I know you", "It's clear", "It's not clear", and "you've run over my wife's foot", blaring the horn for no reason (such as the person in front of you being stopped at a red light) tends to inspire those of us with Los Angeles driving habits to reach for our nines. I'm just saying...

When driving, my rear bumper is not a security blanket for your front fender. I'm not sure why my driving 15 over the speed limit in a right hand lane is an invitation for you to ride me so hard I feel like I should be charging a fee, and then without real reason, for you to jerk into the empty other lane like you've had a seizure, but it's unsettling, and tends to elicit a similar reaction to the one above.

While it is exceedingly obnoxious that the roads are open expanses of asphalt without the limitations of lane markings, as I'm traveling, pulling up next to me and then gradually drifting into my passenger door as you contemplate either the Red Sox or man's place in the universe, is not appreciated.

While I appreciate that turn signals are too distracting to use in what must be the exhausting effort of remaining that precise two inches from the next person's bumper, your lack of using them means I am not going to know or act accordingly if you're coming over into my lane, thus ire on your part will not find a sympathetic recipient on mine. Similarly, if I put MY signal on, it is a statement of intent, thus gunning your engine to block me is only going to provide you a test of your brakes (and your horns). I drive a car that comes with a 5 cent redemption and I don't live in this country. Do you feel lucky?

Please examine the rotaries and strongly consider placing suggestions for right of way. The strategy of "Everyone" doesn't seem to be working and appears to cause you folks to even prey on each other from the number of horns blaring, lest you think tourists are the only ones that can't seem to navigate these. For the uninitiated, a rotary is like a roundabout, if a roundabout could speedball.

For your own safety and comfort, since you do like driving in the breakdown lanes, consider consulting (or hiring) city planners to remove the obstacles from the areas in which this behavior is actually legal. It is disturbing to drive in what the city has designated "a temporary" lane only to have a guardrail suddenly appear in the middle of it, which I gather annoys you too from the way you swing abruptly back into traffic (sans signal), nearly taking out whoever might be to the left of you.

So that was my beginning Boston impression. Since I knew parking there was even more elusive than San Francisco's and equally expensive, it was decided to simply head to Cape Cod, which, due to circling Boston for three hours and a trip to Sears to repair a tire (nice potholes, guys), we never made. We did get as far as Plymouth once most things were closed, and I got a picture of the famous rock to prove I survived the trip through Boston and made it someplace famous.

Plymouth Rock is worth seeing because it's funny and even more spectacularly underwhelming than the Hope Diamond. I'd like to see the rest of the actual historical town which did look really cool, but the rock itself is surrounded by lights and faux Greco-Roman columns, which in turn are surrounded by historical markers, and it's... a rock. With "1620" carved on it. It's not really a big or impressive rock, in fact, save date, identical to other ocean rocks. I suppose the Pilgrims came across it and said "Wow! this rock already HAS 1620 carved on it! Well that's a time saver! Quick! Build some columns and get the camera."

Plymouth is also a surprisingly happening town for what I would have thought would be kind of a sleepy tourist town after dark, but instead it seems to suffer a local infestation of teenagers most of whom were white, packed into the local malt shop, and often clad in leather jackets, making me really feel like I'd wandered into a 1950s teen flick. I kept expecting Bobby to invite Mary Sue to the sock hop. Of course, the over 21s, myself included, took to hanging at the local blues joint, which was pretty cool and far less like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Today? After dragging in at 2 in the morning having survived Massachusetts, it was back to the office to have everyone go "Ohhh. You drove in Boston? Silly girl... tsk tsk", but I got to watch a few procedures and meet some interesting patients since one of the docs seemed to be seeing his full collection of crazies. You know it's bad when you hear him mutter "page me in five minutes" to one of the medical assistants, for reasons that became obvious upon sitting in the session. Whew!